The Dearly Departed Reunite
by notevenifyoukillme
Summary: How I think the meeting between Buffy and Angel at the beginning of season 6 would have gone.


This is a story I wrote a few months ago, and I've never been bothered to post it. As the synopsis tells you, this is what I think happened when Buffy and Angel met up off-screen at the beginning of season 6. Hopefully I'll post another chapter or two of this, provided that I find my muse for this story, which is currently MIA; destination, unknown. Yes, I did just make a joke relating to another one of my fics - I know I'm lame.  
Well, all puns aside, onto the story and I hope you enjoy.

* * *

A hotel; a temporary place to stay. Just passing through, with a life to continue before and afterwards. The best hotels were too expensive to live in for too long, and most of the time the people who lived in them didn't have much to return to in the first place. No, most just stayed for a few nights to complete unfinished business, then returned to their lives as per usual. As Buffy sat in a hotel chair in room 197 on the fourth floor of the hotel (whose name she hadn't bothered to remember), she thought that a hotel was an appropriate place for her and Angel to reunite. This was also probably the most coherent thought that she'd had since being resurrected.

Buffy fiddled anxiously with a delicately folded napkin that had been left on the table next to her as a welcoming gift. Being alive again was uncomfortable to say the least; her hearing was much more sensitive and not nearly as clear, her eyesight was still blurry and she was still finding specks of dirt in her hair that smelled of death and other unpleasant things no matter how many times she washed it.

At some point - Buffy realised that she now had a pretty altered sense of time; it's constant passing was alien to her - Angel ploughed into the room. Buffy wondered why he entered so forcefully, then realised that it was still daytime. Her expression unchanging, she coolly asked him why he had arrived while the sun was out.

Seeming thrown by her calm, Angel told her that he had come as soon as he had been able. He held up a thick black blanket as elaboration. Buffy nodded understandingly and continued fiddling with the crumpled napkin in her lap.

Angel had been expecting a much stronger reaction than this, he couldn't remember a time when he hadn't brought out _some_ emotion in this girl. Still, there he stood and there she sat, seemingly contented with the brutalised napkin she held.

Aware of his penetrating gaze, Buffy lifted her eyes to Angels'. They were the same as ever; a heavenly chocolate brown framed in soft black lashes. His hair was the same - a little longer, maybe, but the real difference was in his body. He wasn't bigger or smaller, rather he looked like something in his chest was clawing at him; his posture was more hunched than she recalled and his face seemed to automatically direct itself downwards. Still through all of this Buffy knew that she exhibited no more than a vacant stare. She was aware that this was Angel - her Angel, but her body was reluctant to react to anything. She supposed that corpses weren't accustomed to butterflies in their stomachs.

Buffy was once again unaware of how much time had passed, perfectly happy to sit and retrace the planes of Angels' face. She felt like she needed to make sure that it belonged to her; the memory.

Between knowing that half of her memories had been tampered with to accommodate Dawn and the total feeling of emptiness and misplacement because of her stint in heaven, Buffy didn't feel like she owned anything of hers. Not even her mind was safe; she was competing with Monks and the girl who hadn't clawed her way out of a coffin - the girl from another lifetime who minded her memories for her inside a fragile glass where Buffy could look but not grasp them. Something inside warned her that if she tried to make the memories her own the glass would smash and the memories would float away, unrestrained.

Angel couldn't take this anymore. This girl was almost catatonic. She had been sitting there staring at his face for fifteen minutes, just looking empty. When a living girl looked less lively than a person who had been dead for two hundred and forty six years, there was a serious problem. Angel strode over to Buffy and the shabby hotel chair, pulled her up onto her feet and cautiously wrapped his arms around her. She seemed surprised by the physical contact, but didn't reject it. He placed his head in her hair and breathed her in, letting them both have this.

When he finally allowed her to breathe - still holding her lightly - Buffy looked dazed. She certainly didn't look any livelier, but she seemed much more aware of where she was.

Buffy had never been a difficult person to talk to; she had always either spoken or eased swiftly into companionable silence, but never had Angel held her in his arms and felt like she wasn't there. He would have to be the one to begin this conversation, and he honestly had no idea where to begin.

Buffy felt warm in Angels' cold arms, unnecessary blood rushed to her face and she almost felt a blush. She suspected that her heart was still getting used to the idea of beating, occasionally stuttering and pausing to question its' next move. She was beginning to reconcile herself with the idea that she wasn't dreaming, and time was growing to mean something, even if nothing else was.

Really looking around for the first time, Buffy investigated the hotel room from Angels' arms. Everything was a neutral crème colour, there were two seats at the small dining table and one lounge. There was one double bed and one bathroom, perpendicular to the very cramped-looking kitchen. They were booked in for one night. Would they sleep in the same bed?

Angel watched Buffys' wide, child-like eyes concentrate on the hotel room, examining and analysing it all. She did a subtle double take when she spotted the single double bed and Angel felt guilty for not booking a room with two beds.

The two of them were barely aware of the fact that they hadn't spoken for at least half an hour, but Angel, determined not to waste his time with Buffy, finally spoke.

He placed his index and middle fingers lightly under her chin and lifted her face to meet his gaze. "Buffy?"

"Mm?" she sighed, pressing her cheek to his palm.

"Where were you?"

"In Sunnydale," she replied confusedly.

"No..." he ran his fingers through her hair now; he couldn't believe he was giving himself so much freedom. He shouldn't have been allowing this, it would only hurt later, "Where_ were_ you?"

Frozen. Buffy felt frozen. Someone had rigged up an industrial freezer that could reduce the temperature to negative eighty degrees Celsius in point four of a second in the hotel room. Where was she? She was everywhere and nowhere, she was nothing and everything, she was complete.

"I was in heaven."

And then Angel asked a question that she_ really_ didn't see coming.

"Are you still there?"

*

Her voice was cold, she knew it was cold. Maybe it was the negative eighty temperature in the room. Taking a step away from him and - ignoring her Slayer instincts - flattening herself against the wall, she replied, "What do you mean? I'm here."

The simple location of her presence doused her words in so much venom that Angels' reply was cut short. There was underlying pain, but clear - and painful - as day, there was unadulterated anger bubbling at the surface of her words.

Pausing for a - figurative - heartbeat, Angel shifted his weight so that he wasn't cornering her against the wall. She eased off of it slightly and he tried to direct her towards the dining room chairs.

If he wanted to be perfectly honest in the matter, Angel had probably eaten more children than he had spoken to in his time, but he knew how to act around one. Simple sentences, keep it basic, be assertive, be nice. He found himself following the same rules around Buffy. Judging by her attitude, this was seriously pent up anger. She must have been trying to act normal for her friends back in Sunnydale, because being as detached as she had been when he had walked in could only mean she was trying very hard to bury what she was feeling.

Buffy, having inched closer to a chair, seated herself and reached for the napkin she had placed on the table.

"You're not... Here," Angel stated, lightly but assertively.

"Yes, I am. I'm _right here,_" she fumed, standing up quickly, "_I'm. Right. Here."_

Angel could sense the same sort of break-down that Faith had had when he had been fighting her in his first year in L.A. coming out. He would have to continue with this, as much as he hated seeing her suffer. If he could get her to really talk about what was wrong, he could help her try to move past it.

"I just... I don't feel you here," he shrugged.

Buffy felt hot tears prick her eyes, she was acting so out of character. This was the kind of crap that Dawn pulled, not her, and still she couldn't stop herself. She stomped her foot on the ground, sending vibrations through the whole room and held her head high, defying Angel_. "I'M. RIGHT. HERE_. _I'M RIGHT HERE. HERE. I'M _NOT _IN HEAVEN,_" her tears overflowed, "_I'M HERE. THEY BROUGHT ME BACK -"_ her words choked off.

Falling into Angels' open arms, she wept. "I'm here, Angel. I'm not in heaven anymore," she sobbed, collapsing to the ground, "I'm here," she hiccoughed, "where everything hurts and nothing makes sense. I'm here."

Tears sprung into Angels' eyes as he cradled Buffy on the hotel floor. For an hour she wept into him, simply repeating with sorrow, "I'm here."

After Angel had watched Buffy cry out what he could honestly estimate as half of her bodily fluid, he stroked her hair softly and she lulled into a peaceful sleep. Hesitantly, he placed her onto the double bed. He wasn't sure whether to lay with her or not, and after a few minutes deliberation he decided that he'd done enough damage for one day. It was just dark, so he went for a walk to clear his head.

Buffy dreamed of wonderful things. Simple things. Easy things. Bright things. Happy things. Meaningless colours flashed before her shapeless form and she drifted through space with no earthly need for anything.

Outside of the hotel Angel noticed that there was a lot of traffic. There hadn't been this much traffic the last time he'd been here.

Then again, he reminded himself, the last time he was here was forty years ago.

Across from the hotel there was a park with a water fountain featuring - much to Angels' amusement - an angel. Birds had been listlessly perched on top of the fountain before Angel had crossed the road but - as the undead did - he had repelled all of the animals quite nicely.

Meandering around the park, he noticed how few people there were around. Was everyone in this town superstitious, or just conscious of muggers? Angel guessed the latter.

Angel didn't really know what to do with himself after several laps around the park and the inspection of several alleys; there were no people and hence no people in trouble. Deciding that he'd better check on Buffy, Angel headed back to the hotel.

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There you go, hope you liked, if you did, let me know? :D


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